Phantoms of Sublimity

Apologia pro Vita Sua
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The poet in his lone yet genial hour
Gives to his eyes a magnifying power :
Or rather he emancipates his eyes
From the black shapeless accidents of size--
In unctuous cones of kindling coal,
Or smoke upwreathing from the pipe's trim bole,
   His gifted ken can see
   Phantoms of sublimity.